The real reason your business isn’t growing.

CRE Success Principle: Leaders who stay too involved in every aspect of production often unknowingly cap their business' potential. Growth comes when you let go, empower others and build a structure that works without you.

You might be the top deal doer in your market – but could you also be what’s holding your business back?

In episode 223 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership, I explore how commercial real estate leaders often become the bottleneck in their own businesses. When growth depends too much on your personal production, you hit a ceiling – fast.

This episode also introduces The Growth Levers Workshop – a free, live event that I’ll be delivering on 11 June, thanks to Wingman.

In the workshop, I’ll walk you through the four ways to grow a commercial real estate business, how to structure your team around revenue-driving functions, and how to apply leverage to free up your time and scale sustainably.

Whether you’re running a team or aiming to scale your personal production, this workshop will help you shift your mindset and reclaim thousands of dollars’ worth of time every month.

This isn’t theory – it’s practical advice that I’ve implemented in my own business and with clients who are seeing real results. 

The workshop is on Wednesday, 11 June at 10:00 am AEST. Save your spot now at cresuccess.co/lever

Episode transcript:

Riddle me this: How can you be the best deal doer in your market, but also be the reason why your business isn't growing? How can that be the case?

Well, it could be because your business is overly reliant on your production in order to grow.

So, in this episode, I'm going to show you exactly why that happens, and I'll tell you how to fix it.

This is episode 223 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm your host, Darren Krakowiak. Thanks so much for joining us.

For today's episode, it's dedicated to one thing. It's helping you build a commercial real estate business that grows without relying on you to do every little thing.

This is about accelerating revenue growth in your business by, well, getting the right people on your team, serving ideal clients with scalable systems.

And I want to focus today's session on an invitation that I have for you to join a workshop.

Now, I know what you might be thinking if you've been listening to the show for a while. You've noticed that I've put on a couple of workshops over the last couple of months, one for ‘Beating the Bigger Firms’ and another one called ‘The Prospecting Skills Drill’, and those workshops were paid workshops. You had to fork out $50 in order to attend.

Now, they were really value-packed, worth it. And this workshop is going to be worth it as well, even though it's absolutely free to attend.

Now this one is free, not because the quality of the content is lower. It's because Wingman, who are organising the event, are footing the bill. So that means that you are able to attend without having to pay for this session.

And this is a session that I typically, well, I definitely wouldn't usually roll out for free, and I would usually only present this as a keynote at an in-person event.

But Wingman have asked me to present it at this event, which I've agreed to do. And it's your opportunity to piggyback off their generosity by going to cresuccess.co/lever – because we're calling it the Growth Levers Workshop – so cresuccess.co/lever, and grabbing your free ticket.

So, let me tell you about how this event is coming together. This event has really been set up to speak to the commercial real estate principal, business owner or high-performing agent, who has discovered that the only way that they can grow their production is by just continuing to work more hours because they can't scale their production or the business beyond their own production.

And they've got a team in place, but maybe the individual performer is not letting go of enough of the tasks that they're hanging onto.

So, the people that they've got on their team, if they even have a team, aren't able to perform at their best. They're not given clear roles and responsibilities, and we don't have the right structure in place to benefit from the leverage that comes from having a team in place.

So, what I want to do in this workshop is just unpack the growth levers concept because there are three functions that exist in every commercial real estate agency, and it exists, whether it's one person doing them or whether we've got a lot of different people doing them.

And these functions actually exist in every profit-seeking revenue-maximising firm. But the issue that we have in, I think, commercial real estate is: Have we adequately separated the function so people are operating within their zone of genius, doing what they're good at, what they like doing, and also what the market will pay them top dollar to do.

And this is really a question about do we have the right people in the right seats to adequately perform those three functions that, whether it's you doing them or whether we've got a team to do them, the business needs those functions to be performed in order to produce revenue.

The next thing that we'll do is talk about these levers, right? And there are actually only four of them.

There are only four ways to grow a commercial real estate business, and I will often get challenged on this when I present that statement about there only being four ways to grow a commercial real estate business. And the truth is, there are many ways, but all of the ways fall within these four categories.

It's organic growth, it's recruitment, it's mergers and acquisitions, or it's entering new markets.

And I want to help you leverage more of those levers because the truth is, most agencies usually only pull one of those levers. Sometimes they might pull a second one, but they're using those levers often without the principle of leverage, or at least the mindset of leverage.

Using something called the function funnel, putting tasks through a funnel and asking, well, can we eliminate this? Can we automate this? Can we outsource this? Can we delegate this? Or if we can't do any of those things, what have we done to start doing it better?

So, this isn't theory, or it isn't just theory. It's stuff that works. I use these systems in my business. I use it over my commercial real estate career, and now I've taught it to my clients in the commercial real estate industry.

And the results that they're getting – in fact, I was just meeting with one of my clients two days ago and he told me that he's just had his best year ever in terms of his personal production.

Now, you might think that that sounds contrary to what I was saying before, which is, well, we want a business that grows beyond the individual's production.

But the reason why he's been able to have his best year is because he's let go of some of the things that he was doing before, and he's got a team around him that can support his production.

It's not only him who's excelling, it's also the people around him.

I've also had other clients; in fact, I had a few clients I was talking about the Mastermind Event in the last episode, where, you know, I read around the table and I talked about my particular client's superpowers, the ones that I coach in this group.

And some of the results that they're starting to get are sensational. We're talking like 30%, 60% increases in revenue, doubling of their profit at the bottom line, really sensational results.

So, this stuff actually works if you are willing to buy into it and shift your mindset.

This workshop, if you choose to join us, could be a real turning point for your business.

So, it's not just about leading. It's not just about closing the next deal. It's about being in front of a business that is actually set up to grow beyond your production.

We're going to help you get that right structure in place, including concepts like ‘Find, Mind and Grind’, and also ‘Hunt, Front and Grunt’.

These are two ways that you can structure your sales and leasing and your property management teams, respectively, to transform how you scale those businesses.

We will give you the levers that I talked about before, including some specific ways that you can use those levers to grow, for example, a property management business.

And I think property management is one part of a commercial real estate agency, which is perhaps a little bit unloved when it comes to driving growth, it sort of sits there as an asset that chugs along.

And most commercial real estate principals are sales and leasing experts before they are property management experts. Well, I think there's a lot of untapped potential in your property management business, so we will talk about that.

And if you're not a business owner, by the way, but concepts that we've got, the mindset shifts that we're going to help you make are really going to set you up to improve your personal production and, well, put you in a better frame of mind, potentially, if you do want to open your own business in the future, you're going to be streets ahead of where most people are, where they start, because most people, of course, believe that the way to grow a business is just to work harder and to bring in more revenue themselves.

So, the workshop itself, it is live, it is free, and it is built for commercial real estate leaders. High performing individuals, anyone who is doing $15 an hour tasks, even though your time is actually worth $200, $300, $500 an hour.

I've talked about it before, the rule of 2000 hours. So, if you've heard some of these concepts that I've been speaking about in the podcast over recent episodes or even over the years, if you're a long-term listener, this is where it all comes together.

This is where you'll really get clear on the hidden cost of doing everything yourself and how you can reclaim tens of thousands of dollars of your time every single month.

So, if you'd like to join us, the invitation is to go to cresuccess.co/lever and save your spot.

Seats are limited. This won't be repeated for free. So, this is your moment to stop being the bottleneck that is getting in the way of growth and to start being the owner of business or the leader of a team that is set up to scale.

So, go to cresuccess.co/lever to save your spot.

If you've ever said to yourself, you know what? I'm too busy to grow. Well, I want you to spend 45 minutes in this workshop. I've even made it less than an hour, so you could give up the time.

It's happening on Wednesday, the 11th of June at 10:00 AM Melbourne, Sydney Time, Australian Eastern Standard Time, Queensland, Tasmania time.

It's free, it's live. It's going to change the way that you look at scaling your business, and you are invited to join me for that session.

If you want to know the exact time in your local time zone, just go to that website, cresuccess.co/lever, and it will show you the start time in your time zone.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.